The matching grant follows a previous grant of $500,000 that the Foundation awarded to the Mead in December 2008 to create a position for a Coordinator of College Programs, a museum-based scholar charged with spurring and facilitating curricular engagement with the collection.

AMHERST, MASS.- The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Amherst Colleges Mead Art Museum a $1,000,000 matching grant to endow its Coordinator of College Programs position and thereby ensure the continuation of the museums successful initiatives to integrate the colleges art collection meaningfully into its curriculum. As a condition of the grant, Amherst College has committed to raise a minimum of $1,000,000 within three years. The college seeks to raise an additional $500,000 to underwrite the museum-based academic programs, overseen by the Coordinator, that engage 90 percent of Amhersts student body each year.

The matching grant follows a previous grant of $500,000 that the Foundation awarded to the Mead in December 2008 to create a position for a Coordinator of College Programs, a museum-based scholar charged with spurring and facilitating curricular engagement with the collection. The 2008 grant also launched an ongoing series of semiannual faculty seminars in which visiting experts teach the teachers about specific areas of the colleges wide-ranging, fine-quality art collection; established stipends for faculty guest curators of collection-based exhibitions; and piloted a program of two-year post-baccalaureate curatorial fellowships.

In the three brief but busy years since the museum received its first grant from the Mellon Foundation, the initiatives that it funded have transformed teaching and research at Amherst, noted Elizabeth Barker, the Meads director and chief curator. Classes from virtually every academic discipline now regularly use the Meads collections in a range of inquiriesfrom exploring medieval systems of musical notation to considering our genetic ties to other animals; from researching artists materials to investigating the worlds religious traditions. The Foundations new grantthe largest in our museum's historypromises to ensure that this extraordinary recent success will come to be seen as the baseline, rather than as the high watermark, for this innovative work.

Gregory Call, Amherst Colleges dean of the faculty, observed, With this exceptional grant from the Mellon Foundation and the generous assistance of other supporters, Amherst will claim a leadership position among 21st-century academic art museums by serving as a laboratory for the creative, often visionary, interdisciplinary inquiries that lie at the heart of a liberal arts education.

Added Barker: Anyone interested in learning more about this exciting opportunity to partner with the Mellon Foundation in endowing this critically important position should feel welcome to contact me directly at 413-542-2295. With help from our dedicated supporters, I know well reach our goal and ensure that the Mead is able to provide uninterrupted academic services, now and for every generation of Amherst students to come.

Information about the museums educational initiatives, including a list of all college classes that have used the Meads resources for teaching in recent years and the specific objects they studied, is available on the Meads website: www.amherst.edu/mead.